Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Why the Left Wants to Change America

Because, in their hate, they have constructed a delusory view of it

If you ask most supporters of Sen. Barack Obama why they so fervently want him to be elected president, they will tell you about their deep yearning for "change." And that, of course, has been the theme of the Obama campaign from its inception -- "change." It is the word found on nearly all the placards at Obama rallies. It is the word most often cited by the candidate himself. But for all its ubiquity and for all the passion of its advocates, what this change is about is not entirely clear.

Of course, Obama himself often has spoken about the overriding need for change from eight years of President George W. Bush's policies. But this is not what he or most of his supporters really mean when they talk about change. In fact, it cannot be. This is easy to show: All candidates for president run on a platform of change from the party in power. If they don't stand for change, why vote for them?

George W. Bush wanted a change from Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton wanted a change from the first George Bush. And so on back to the first candidate for president to run from a party other than that of the prior president. If change in policies from those of George W. Bush were all Barack Obama meant by change, "change" would not elicit anywhere near the passion it does. Nor would it be the basis of the depth of his appeal to his left-wing supporters. Surely John Kerry wanted as much of a change from George W. Bush in 2004. Yet he did not run on a platform of "change."

What Barack Obama is tapping into with the word "change" is nearly eight years of the left's constructing a description of an America that has been made so awful that "change" means changing America, not just changing policies. The truth is that aside from the Iraq war, which is turning out to be quite successful, George W. Bush's policies have not been particularly controversial or even particularly right-wing. But the left has constructed for itself a view of America that, if you subscribe to it, makes radical change imperative. The left, from The New York Times to MoveOn.org, has led itself and others to believe that:

--George W. Bush lied America into war.

--Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 Americans have been killed in a war waged in order to line the pockets of Vice President Dick Cheney's friends.

--The Constitution has been trampled on.

--America has become a torturing country.

--America's poor have become far more numerous and far more downtrodden.

--American troops in Iraq repeatedly have engaged in atrocities against innocent civilians.

--The opportunity for economic self-improvement has ceased for most Americans.

--Racism is endemic to American society.

--Republican rallies are hate-fests.

--John McCain has run a racist campaign against Barack Obama.

--Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is a religious zealot and an idiot.

--Christian fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over America and turning it into a theocracy.

--The world is getting closer and closer to catastrophic and irreversible damage caused by human beings; and George W. Bush and energy interests are standing in the way of preventing universal destruction.

--America is on the road to fascism.

Now, as it happens, none of those things is true. But the left believes them all. That is why radical "change" becomes mandatory -- or America will collapse (and the world, too, which is why Barack Obama often mentions changing the world, as well as America).

Of course, many Americans who do not consider themselves leftist also will vote for Barack Obama and left-wing Democratic congressional candidates. They do so because they are lifelong Democrats who do not realize how far left their party has strayed and think they still are voting for the party of Truman and JFK; or because they personally benefit from Democratic largesse (e.g., government workers); or because they are active in their unions; or because they have come to believe the media and the Democrats, who have been telling them for almost a decade about how George W. Bush and the Republicans have ruined their country.

But as for the left, it lives in a bubble of its making. That is why most leftists live in places where nearly everyone shares their fantasies -- bubbles such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, the west side of Los Angeles, and the most hermetically sealed of the bubbles: universities. They interact almost only with other people who share their fantasy world of America Made Bad.

From Karl Marx to today's Democratic Party, the left everywhere has manufactured villains to slay -- starting with the bourgeoisie and land owners to today's "special interests" (though not, of course, left-wing special interests, such as labor unions, teachers unions and the trial bar), "the rich," drug companies, oil companies, neocons, evangelical Christians and, of course, the myriad racists, sexists, Islamophobes, homophobes and xenophobes.

That's why the left is so passionate about "change." In fact, if I believed America had become what the left believe it has become, I would be, too. But what they believe about America is not true; America remains the greatest country in the world. It needs to be fixed where broken, but not changed. Those who want to change it will make it worse. Perhaps much worse.

We hear more about Palin's wardrobe than we do about Obama's Communist associations

Big Media have pulled out all their stops in trying to elect Barack Obama by withholding from the American people the truth about his radical record and associates. Big media, their polls and the presidential debates practically ignored front-burner issues important to millions of Americans.

By excluding abortion and same-sex marriage from national debate, Big Media kept the voters from knowing that Obama, as chairman of the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, killed the "Born Alive" bill, thereby depriving babies born alive from botched abortions of medical care and nutrition. Big Media obviously didn't want a repetition of Obama's embarrassing handling of these issues in the Saddleback dialogue.

The issue of illegal aliens was censored out of the presidential debates and other coverage. The voters were kept oblivious to the fact that Obama favors giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens and John McCain does not. This issue is so powerful with the voters that it played a major role in the dumping of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the unprecedented recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. It could have done likewise to Obama.

How many times have you heard that Obama will cut taxes on 95 percent of Americans? Have you even once heard Big Media tell us that's a big lie because 40 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income taxes at all?

Talking about "95 percent" means Obama intends to increase government handouts, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), to non-taxpaying Americans. That would surely be compatible with his promise to "spread the wealth around."

Big Media have threatened to hang a scarlet letter on anyone who dares to mention Obama's middle name. Funny thing, in all the years that I spent criticizing the disarmament-appeasement policies of JFK's and LBJ's Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, nobody ever said I was unfair to use his strange middle name.

But Obama is different. Big Media have cloaked him with a security blanket that not only protects him from criticism, but viciously attacks anybody who tells the truth about Obama's life story in Indonesia, Hawaii, Kenya or Chicago.

On Oct. 15, The New York Times ran a front-page above-the-fold pretend-news article threatening McCain that Big Media will not tolerate any negative attacks on Obama, such as talking about Obama's relationship with the 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers. The Times warned McCain and his supporters that it is unacceptable to make "strong political attacks" on Obama or be "sharply personal" or even use an "angry tone."

But the voters have a right to know who are and were Obama's associates. Old adages are still valid: "Birds of a feather flock together," and, "A man is known by the company he keeps." Why don't Big Media tell us that Obama launched his political campaign in the Chicago living room of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, who was famous for bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon? Why don't Big Media tell us about the relationship of Obama on school issues with Ayers, who as a professor of education is now working to replace the three R's with a fourth -- Rebellion against the U.S. social and economic structure?

When Sean Hannity aired a program about "Obama and Friends," The New York Times rushed forth to defend Obama's ties with Ayers and to attack Hannity's program as "partisan" and "provocative." We are apparently not permitted to be partisan or provocative about Obama.

How could Obama sit in a church for 20 years where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke hatefully about whites and cursed America as a racist country? Yet, Big Media now claim it is racist for anyone to criticize Obama's long and personal association with Jeremiah "damn America" Wright.

Why don't Big Media dissect the revelations and biases in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," with the same journalistic curiosity they use about Sarah Palin's wardrobe? Big Media present Obama as some sort of intellectual, but why don't we hear about his failure to write anything meaningful for the Harvard Law Review when he was its affirmative-action president?

Why don't we hear more about Obama's friendship with the communist Frank Marshall Davis, who was part of a Soviet-sponsored network in Hawaii? Why aren't we given details about Obama's financial relationship with Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer now in prison?

The source of money has always been fair game for anybody to talk about in political campaigns. Why haven't Big Media assigned their investigative reporters to trace the hundreds of millions of dollars that may be illegally flowing to the Obama campaign from foreign sources?

Pew Research confirms that 70 percent of Obama's media coverage has been positive and 60 percent of McCain's has been negative. Memo to the American people: Will we let Big Media decide this election by censoring the news we have a right to know?

Scion Of The Times: Elect Obama, Get Two Two-Fers ... Or Maybe An Asian "Compromise"

According to this article in Sunday's The Hill newspaper, the leading candidates to replace Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the Senate, should they be elected president and vice president, are Jessie Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Joe Biden's son, Beau Biden. Both fathers are said to be eager to have their sons inherit their seats.

Jackson's case is strengthened by the fact that Obama is the only African-American member of the Senate. Presumably, Obama would like to see at least one African-American representative in the chamber.

Really? Don't Senators represent states, not races? And doesn't future president Obama present himself as post-racial? Isn't he on record (quoted here) saying "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America"?

Never mind, since he's also on record defending the practice of providing preferential treatment to some Americans based on their race. Or maybe Illinois (or at least the Democratic Party in Illinois), unlike the United States of America whose unity Obama praises when it suits him, maintains a vestigial political culture still made up of clearly defined racial and ethnic tribes. That certainly seems to be the case, for The Hill reports that

it's not a slam-dunk for Jackson. [Governor] Blagojevich must pick a candidate who can hold the seat in 2010, when the temporary two-year appointment would expire. Some Democratic strategists question whether Jackson can win statewide.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who's white and is very close to organized labor, has made it clear that she also would like to move into Obama's Senate seat.

Democrats in Schakowsky's camp argue that she would run more successfully in Southern Illinois and tout her strong ties to the labor community. They also tout her energy and record of accomplishment in Congress. She is one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) closer friends.

But Gov. Blagojevich's choice is not, as it were, black and white, since there is a third choice (a candidate that, in other contexts, might be described as a dark horse).

Blagojevich may go outside the Illinois House delegation. One possible candidate would be Tammy Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs. Duckworth, who is Asian-American, could serve as a compromise candidate on the race question.

Racialism has really run amuck when a reporter can write, with an apparently straight face, that an Asian-American is "a compromise candidate on the race question." If racialism remains that pervasive, we are all compromised beyond redemption.

With accusations of voter registration fraud swirling as early voting begins in many states, some Hillary Clinton supporters are saying: "I told you so." Already in Iowa, the Obama campaign was breaking the rules, busing in supporters from neighboring states to vote illegally in the first contest in the primaries and physically intimidating Hillary supporters, they say.

Obama's surprisingly strong win in Iowa, which defied all the polls, propelled his upstart candidacy to front-runner status. But Lynette Long, a Hillary supporter from Bethesda, Md., who has a long and respected academic career, believes Obama's victory in Iowa and in 12 other caucus states was no miracle. "It was fraud," she told Newsmax.

Long has spent several months studying the caucus and primary results. "After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and reviewing hundreds of personal stories, my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process," she said. In Hawaii, for example, the caucus organizers ran out of ballots, so Obama operatives created more from Post-its and scraps of paper and dumped them into ice cream buckets. "The caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants, a sure sign of voter fraud," Long said.

In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary, flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets, and told union members they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.

In Texas, more than 2,000 Clinton and Edwards supporters filed complaints with the state Democratic Party because of the massive fraud. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign's actions "amount to criminal violations" and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement, but nothing happened.

In caucus after caucus, Obama bused in supporters from out of state, intimidated elderly voters and women, and stole election packets so Hillary supporters couldn't vote. Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.

Obama's win in the caucuses, which were smaller events than the primaries and were run by the party, not the states, gave him the margin of victory he needed to win a razor-thin majority in the delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention. Without these caucus wins, which Long and others claim were based on fraud, Clinton would be the Democrats' nominee running against John McCain.

Citing a detailed report on the voting results and delegate accounts by accountant Piniel Cronin, "there were only four pledged delegates between Hillary and Obama once you discount caucus fraud," Long said. Long has compiled many of these eyewitness reports from the 14 caucus states in a 98-page, single-spaced report and in an interactive Web site: www.caucusanalysis.org.

ACORN involvement

The Obama campaign recently admitted that it paid an affiliate of ACORN, the controversial community organizer that Obama represented in Chicago, more than $832,000 for "voter turnout" work during the primaries. The campaign initially claimed the money had been spent on "staging, sound and light" and "advance work."

State and federal law enforcement in 11 states are investigating allegations of voter registration fraud against the Obama campaign. ACORN workers repeatedly registered voters in the name of "Mickey Mouse," and registered the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys twice: once in Nevada, and again in Minnesota.

A group that has worked with ACORN in the past registered a dead goldfish under the name "Princess Nudelman" in Illinois. When reporters informed Beth Nudelman, a Democrat, that her former pet was a registered voter, she said, "This person is a dead fish."

ACORN was known for its "intimidation tactics," said independent scholar Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., who has researched Obama's long-standing ties to the group. Fully 30 percent of 1.3 million new voters ACORN claims to have registered this year are believed to be illegitimate........

"Mr. Obama's elections are pregnant with the implications that he has so far gamed every office he has sought by underhanded and sordid means," Blankley wrote, while "the American media has let these extraordinary events simply pass without significant comment." Hillary Clinton supporters, belatedly, now agree.

Undeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one week left to Election Day. Bush's approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon's Watergate nadir and almost down to Carter-Truman lows. After each of those presidents reached their floors -- in 1952, 1974, 1980 -- the opposition party captured the White House. Moreover, 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans think the nation is on the wrong course, and since mid-September, when McCain was still slightly ahead, the Dow has lost 4,000 points -- $5 trillion to $6 trillion in value.

Leading now by eight points in an average of national polls, Barack Obama has other advantages. Not a single blue state is regarded as imperiled or even a toss-up, while Obama leads in six crucial red states: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Colorado. Should McCain lose one of the six, he would have to win Pennsylvania to compensate for the lost electoral votes. But the latest Pennsylvania polls show Barack with a double-digit lead. Lately moving into the toss-up category are Nevada, North Dakota, Montana and Indiana. All voted twice for George W. Bush.

Not only is Obama ahead in the state and national polls, he has more money, is running far more ads, has a superior organization on the ground, attracts larger crowds, and has greater enthusiasm and more media in camp. And new voter registrations heavily favor the Democrats.

Though Congress is regarded by Americans with a disdain bordering on disgust -- five of six Americans think it has done a poor job -- Democratic majorities are certain to grow. Indeed, with Democrats favored by 10 points over Republicans, Nancy Pelosi's majority could grow by 25 seats and Harry Reid could find himself with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.

Democrats already have 49, plus two independents: Socialist Bernie Sanders and Independent Joe Lieberman. Their challengers are now ahead in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado, with a chance of picking up Georgia, Alaska, Kentucky and Mississippi. We may be looking at a reverse of 1980, when Reagan won a 10-point victory over Jimmy Carter, and Republicans took the Senate and, working with Boll Weevil Democrats, effective control of the House.

With his tax cuts, defense buildup and rollback policy against the "Evil Empire," Reagan gave us some of the best years of our lives, culminating in America's epochal victory in the Cold War. What does the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid offer?

Rep. Barney Frank is calling for new tax hikes on the most successful and a 25 percent across-the-board slash in national defense. Sen. John Kerry is talking up new and massive federal spending, a la FDR's New Deal. Specifically, we can almost surely expect:

-- Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.

-- Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a virtual open border with a Mexico of 110 million.

-- Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry 60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.

-- Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.

-- Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and appellate courts will be stacked with "progressives."

-- Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of the closet. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dead.

-- The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California, Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court will require all 50 states to recognize.

-- A "Freedom of Choice Act" nullifying all state restrictions on abortions will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.

-- Affirmative action -- hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual orientation until specified quotas are reached -- will be rigorously enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.

-- Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to America, if necessary by breaching her borders.

-- A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local governments spending up could come in December or early next year.

-- The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.

Today, a new video surfaced, showing the Democratic Party vice presidential nominee facing an on-air grilling at the hands of Chris May and Angela Russell, co-anchors of the 4 p.m. newscast at KYW-TV "CBS 3? in Philadelphia. And, for the second time in a week, the Democratic Party vice presidential nominee has tossed a local television station "under the bus."

Several days ago, I published a post showing Biden being grilled by Orlando television news anchor Barbara West. Soon after, word surfaced that the Obama-Biden campaign had banned the station from future interviews.

While it's been difficult to pin down the exact day on which the newscast aired, the questions asked of Biden ? ranging from spreading the wealth to funneling campaign cash to relatives ? made today a day filled with nearly two and one-half minutes of shear entertainment pleasure.

With so many television stations now "under the bus," perhaps we can get some undercover reports from under the bus during the next eight days?

In Brief

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

Leftism is the hunger for control over other people. The Left are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises. "Power at any price" is their intrinsic motto -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at.

The large number of rich Leftists shows that it is not material envy that drives them but rather HATRED of society's existing arrangements

Leftists don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

Among well-informed people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists hate success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal would be that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions run away with them and who are much more in need of praise from others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average black adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.